On the positive: he and Chevy were seeing each other all night. It's a start.
Yeah I'm a bit confident about the insistence on playing Soder. Gotta find options unless they are just really worried about totally breaking his psyche for the future in which case they think he's the #1 in the long run which is even more perplexing.
The thing that gets me is that Stauber and Soder are the same age. Both are waiver-exempt. The only difference I see is that Stauber's deal expired this year and is arbitration-eligible.
How so? He's growing and getting better regardless of the trash he's currently surrounded with. Losing is more important than winning at this point. Only bad thing is that there is very little that anyone would want at the deadline.
Yep all that matters is he keeps growing and getting better, if we also help our draft position than all the better.
Because others need to get better around him? He needs to play with players who are going to play around him for years to come? He's not going to be able to get so good someday that he just instantly makes them win every game? He needs to be able to rely on others to make a play instead of just playing the quantity game?
Well one way to get others around him better is to draft better players, loosing sucks but it helps in that department.
Who exactly who needs to get better. They have a team of near untradable players. One young star, a couple of guys playing out their career and trash. They aren't getting any better.
Korch, for one. I don't think he's horrible but he definitely makes some rookie mistakes as-expected by a rookie D-man. Doesn't mean he shouldn't be trying to get better.
Except this isn't the first year, second year, third year.... They've been to the playoffs once since the 2016-2017 season and in the 2017 playoffs where they were one of the best teams in the league, they got swept in the first round. In 2020 they were essentially the last team in during a shortened season for COVID.
It didn't help that we had a beancounter at the helm who refused to listen to whatever hockey mind braintrust he had at his disposal. We basically had to start at Ground Zero because of the damage he did, and we're still paying for it *cough*SethJones*cough*
But that's was my whole point, I said what a wasted performance, and I was told we have nothing, all we can do to help is lose to bring more draft picks, to which I've said we've been sucking, we've had a lot of draft picks regardless of who picked them. The jury is still out on Kyle, but he didn't fully clean house from the scouts and folks who made those picks, as a matter of fact he was part of the management team at that time. We have at least 2 hand fulls of players 24 and under on or around this active roster right now who have been drafted by the Hawks. They need to be developing and getting better. We can't waste Bedard's talent on them just being honored having been on the ice with him. He's a generational talent that makes those around him better, and I haven't seen that much and that's on them. Yes, we're limited in what we can bring in FA and Vet wise, but we're not limited in the development of the young players who still have a shot to be better. And I've not seen many bright spots there at all and nothing with consistency. The fun of the first time around core was that we saw those future core pieces step up. We didn't know who they were at the beginning of the season, but they emerged. You could feel who was going to work together and who was going to stick, and who was getting it. At the end of this season I've seen some bright spots but I can't say that their is a single player I would hate to see go outside of Bedard. Maybe Vlasic, but only cause I love his size and calling him the Big Pickle.
